To trash or not to trash? At first glance, some photos are all-too-obvious candidates for your computer's recycle bin. Anyone else would trash them, but should you? Before you give up, with some Photoshop tricks you can have a go at recovering the essence of the photo. Helen Bradley shows you some techniques for fixing images that might otherwise be unusable.

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To trash or not to trash? At first glance, some photos are all-too-obvious
candidates for your computer's recycle bin. Anyone else would trash them,
but should you? What if it's the only photo you have of a person or
something else you treasure? Before you give up, get out your box of Photoshop
tricks (with some I'm about to show you) and have a go at recovering some
of the essence of the photo. You might be surprised at what you can achieve in
just a few well-planned steps.

In this article, I'll show you some techniques for fixing images that
might otherwise be unusable. You'll see a sequence for making the fixes
that will ensure that you're not making changes early in your edits that
you'll undo in later steps. You'll also learn some techniques for
ensuring that the changes can be undone or edited whenever possible so that you
can reverse or tweak the results later on.

NOTE

One proviso before we begin: Some images are simply beyond repair. For
example, it is difficult to get back the detail lost in a very blurry photo,
although some tools, such as Photoshop's new Smart Sharpen tool, can go a
long way toward reducing the blur effect. Using an artistic filter can give a
pleasing resulting image, but not a truly fixed one. Where there is image data
available such as in severely over- or underexposed images or damaged prints,
it's usually possible to extract something worthwhile.

Starting Out Right

The first step to fix a badly damaged photograph is to identify its problems.
The photo might be damaged because of age and abuse, or the exposure was wrong
so there is detail lost in the shadows or highlights.

Make a note of the problems with the image, particularly when there are
multiple things to fix. Determine the order in which the tasks should be
performed. There are some edits that should be performed in a certain
order—for example, you should always sharpen and crop an image last. The
editing process tends to leave the image somewhat soft, so you'll want to
sharpen the image after you've softened it, not before. Sharpening too
early in the editing process will destroy some of the image data at a time when
you need all the image data you can get, and it won't avoid the need to
sharpen later, anyway.

Tasks that should be performed early in the editing process include cloning
distracting elements from the image, restoring any missing pieces, and adjusting
levels to improve the image's tonal range. You can use the Shadow/Highlight
tool to restore data from an over- or underexposed image by dragging detail out
of deep shadows and blown-out highlights—it's another fix you'll
perform early on. If an image suffers from color damage—or if its white
balance is off—adjusting the colors to a more natural look early on will
reveal other color issues that still need to be repaired.

If you need to reduce noise, do this early in the process as well so you can
address any softening of the image caused by the noise-reduction process. On the
other hand, if you plan to add noise to an image, this process is best done
later in the process after other tasks have been performed (for example, after
cloning or applying a blur because blurring will distort the noise).

When an image suffers damage from dust, scratches, or blemishes, these fixes
should be performed early in the editing process because they will soften the
image. As a final step, you'll sharpen and crop the image to focus
attention on the subject.